This work is for people committed to doing the work. I am affirming and welcoming of queer couples, non-traditional relationship structures, and all identities and orientations. If you're trying to build something real together, I've got your back.
Most couples come to therapy because they're exhausted. Exhausted from the same arguments that never resolve. From the distance that's grown between them without either partner quite understanding how. From trying harder and harder in all the ways they know how — and still ending up in the same place.
The problem usually isn't that you don't love each other. It's that both of you are showing up to the relationship carrying things — old wounds, protective parts, deep-seated beliefs about love and safety and worth — that were there long before you met. And those things are having conversations with each other that neither of you fully realizes is happening.
A DIFFERENT KIND OF COUPLES THERAPY
Traditional couples therapy often focuses on communication skills, conflict resolution, and behavioral change. Those things matter. But they have a ceiling — because they address what partners do without addressing what's driving the doing. The reactive part that floods with rage or shuts completely down. The part that needs to win the argument more than it needs connection. The part that learned, a long time ago, that love isn't safe.
The approach I use — Intimacy from the Inside Out, grounded in Internal Family Systems — goes underneath the surface patterns to work with the internal systems each partner brings into the relationship. When both partners can understand their own parts, take responsibility for how those parts show up, and begin to lead from a more grounded, compassionate place, the relationship changes — genuinely and durably — because the people in it have changed.
Real change in a relationship doesn't come from learning to fight better. It comes from each partner doing the work to understand what they're actually fighting about — inside themselves.
WHAT IFS-BASED COUPLES THERAPY LOOKS LIKE
Understanding your own parts — and your partner's.
Every reaction you have in your relationship — the defensiveness, the withdrawal, the pursuit, the shutdown — belongs to a part of you with a history. IFS helps each partner get curious about those parts rather than hijacked by them. When you can say "a part of me is terrified right now" instead of acting from that terror, everything in the dynamic begins to shift.
Becoming the primary caretaker of your own internal world.
One of the central principles of this work is that each partner learns to take care of their own parts — to be present with their own fear, their own anger, their own old wounds — rather than outsourcing that job to their partner or making their partner responsible for managing it. This doesn't mean you stop being there for each other. It means you stop needing each other to complete you in ways that were never sustainable.
Holding accountability in both directions.
This work asks each partner to hold two things at once: accountability for how their own parts react, and accountability for the impact of those reactions on their partner. Not one or the other — both. That dual accountability is what makes genuine repair possible, and what allows both partners to feel genuinely seen rather than managed.
Going to the roots of the patterns.
The arguments you keep having are rarely about what they appear to be about. Underneath most recurring conflict are older wounds — attachment injuries, earlier experiences of abandonment or engulfment or betrayal — that get activated in the present relationship. When we can identify and work with those roots, the conflict itself often loses its charge. Not because the issues disappear, but because they're no longer carrying the weight of everything that came before.
AN HONEST WORD ABOUT FIT
This work requires both partners. Really.
I want to be direct with you about something, because I think honesty here serves you better than a sales pitch.
The couples I have the most success with are those in which both partners are genuinely willing to turn inward — to look at themselves, not just at each other. Both willing to ask: how are my own parts showing up here? What am I bringing into this dynamic? What do I need to take responsibility for, in my reactions and in my impact?
That requires a particular kind of willingness. And it requires roughly equal investment from both people.
Where this work struggles — and why I'm telling you.
When one partner is doing the majority of the internal work — dragging or begging the other to engage, over-functioning for the whole system while the other under-functions — real change is very difficult to achieve. The over-functioning partner would need to step back, and the under-functioning partner would need to genuinely step up, for the dynamic to actually shift. Without that, therapy tends to become another arena where the same imbalance plays out.
I'm not saying this to discourage you. I'm saying it because I respect your time, your resources, and your hope — and I'd rather you have an accurate picture of what makes this work succeed than arrive with expectations that don't match what's actually possible in your situation.
If you're unsure where you and your partner fall, that's a completely reasonable thing to explore together in an initial session.
WHAT BECOMES POSSIBLE
When both partners do this work, something real happens.
When both partners are genuinely engaged — curious about themselves, accountable for their impact, willing to be present with their own discomfort rather than discharge it onto each other — the relationship that becomes possible is qualitatively different from what most people thought was available to them.
Not a relationship without conflict. Not a relationship where the hard things don't come up. But one where both people feel genuinely known — not managed, not accommodated, not tolerated — known and valued. Where repair is real. Where intimacy isn't something that has to be earned back after every rupture, but something that deepens through the process of rupture and repair itself.
That's what this work is for. And when both partners bring themselves to it fully, it's some of the most meaningful work I do.
The relationship you want already exists — it's waiting on the other side of both of you being willing to look inward.
WHO THIS IS FOR
This work is a good fit if...
Both of you are willing to look at yourselves — not just at each other. You're tired of the surface-level cycles and ready to understand what's underneath them. You're open to the idea that the work of a relationship starts inside each individual, and that the most loving thing you can do for your partner is take genuine responsibility for your own internal world.
You don't have to have it figured out. You don't have to come in agreement. You just both have to be genuinely willing — and that willingness has to be real, not performed. If it is, there's a lot we can do together.